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Kathleen Commander wasn't going to let a little thing like
being assaulted and having her car stolen stop her from finishing her
newspaper route early Saturday morning.

"I just felt like I had to finish," Commander, 53, said
on Sunday. "I felt like I had to get back on the horse and ride it.
That was my job. People were counting on me."

Commander was delivering The Register-Guard in Springfield about 4
a.m. Saturday when she was approached near the intersection of K and
Mill streets by a woman police say was Jennifer Benet Jones, 28. Jones
is most likely homeless and has a long rap sheet of crimes that include
breaking into cars, trespassing and possession of methamphetamine,
Springfield police Sgt. Pete Kirkpatrick said.

"Do you have a cigarette?" Commander said the woman asked
her.

"No," said a startled Commander, who was listening to
music on her transistor radio through ear buds. "I don't
smoke."

"Can you give me a ride to a bar?" Commander said the
woman asked in the predawn darkness illuminated only by a lone street
light.

"No, I'm delivering newspapers," Commander said.

But the woman, who would not take no for an answer, opened the
passenger- side door of Commander's jade green 1995 Buick Riviera,
shoved some newspapers out of the seat and then jumped in before again
asking for a ride to a bar, Commander said.

Stunned, Commander began to walk across the street and dial 911 on
her cell phone. But before she could punch in the first '1,'
the woman had jumped on her back, Commander said during a retelling of
the story at the Chase Village Apartments near Autzen Stadium in Eugene,
where she lives.

Then the woman's fist came flying from behind and struck
Commander in the right eye and forehead, she said.

Then the woman was in front of her, still swinging away, Commander
said.

"I had my hands (up), blocking her," she said.

The woman then snagged Commander's car keys out of her hand,
jumped into the driver's seat and drove west on K Street, said
Commander, who then dialed 911 successfully. Police arrived in about
five minutes. They took photos of her face and got a description of the
woman, Commander said.

She then called her boyfriend, Lew Hall, to tell him what happened.
Then she called a Register- Guard circulation manager she had done some
substitute route delivery for in January (she's only had her
present route since April 15) and was eventually connected with someone
who took her more newspapers so that she and Hall, who came to join her,
could finish the route before the R-G's 6:30 a.m. deadline.

About 10 newspapers were left on the ground after the woman shoved
them out, Commander said. But she needed an additional 35 or so papers
to finish.

Commander said she ran into one subscriber who was coming out of
her home, and Commander half-jokingly apologized for being later than
usual "but I was just assaulted and car jacked."

"Oh. My. God," was the customer's response,
Commander said. Then she gave Commander a hug.

The papers were delivered by about 5:50 a.m., Commander said.

Meanwhile, a few hours later, Oregon State Police received a report
of a woman who stole gas from a station in Chemult, along Highway 97 in
Southern Oregon, Kirkpatrick said. Troopers found the vehicle a couple
of miles south, and a high-speed chased ensued.

Police eventually laid down spike strips that blew out the tires on
what police say is Commander's vehicle, Kirkpatrick said.

"But she did drive on the rims for four miles," Commander
said police told her. "And they think the engine and transmission
are shot," she said of the car she bought last summer for $2,100
that now has 116,000 miles on it and ruined tires that were brand-new in
April.

Commander and Hall are planning to drive to the state police office
in Klamath Falls today to retrieve the belongings that were in her car,
including her wallet with all of her ID and some prescription
medication.

That will be after Commander finishes her route, of course.

Hall again helped her deliver on Sunday, but Commander said she
would be back out there by herself Monday morning - armed with a can of
mace and a small air horn.

"I'm very nervous," said Commander, who works full
time in accounting at the Holiday Inn in Springfield. She took the paper
route this spring for some extra income to help support her and her four
children between the ages of 17 and 32, and her grandkids.

Now, though, without a vehicle and the prospects of having it
covered by her insurance policy uncertain because she thinks it's
totaled and not worth all that much, she's not sure what she's
going to do.

"I took the R-G route so I'd have more (financial)
freedom," Commander said, wiping away tears. "Now this. It
just seems really unfair that there are people out there who ruin things
for you.

"But I feel sorry for the next person who walks up to me,
'cause I'm only going to warn them once."

Thurston graduate has clear view of future

If you smell smoke this summer, Thurston High School senior Nick
Mortenson is probably right in the thick of it.

"I'm with Mohawk Valley Rural District as a structure
firefighter," Mortenson says. "We provide firefighting for
houses and work car crashes and medical calls. Just recently I was hired
with the Oregon Department of Forestry for wildland firefighting for the
summer season."

Mortenson has been working toward a career in fire since he was 14,
when he started at the Lane County Sheriff's Office's Search
and Rescue program. He attended fire academy at the Mohawk Valley Fire
District at age 17, one of two people in the class.

"It was the smallest academy Mohawk had," Mortenson says.
"It was me at 17 and a 16-year-old at the time. It's a cadet
program where minors can be junior firefighters. She and I just recently
turned 18 this last year so we're both full-on firefighters working
on our Firefighter 1 Certification."

Earning that certification involves obtaining signatures in a task
book and can take anywhere from six months to a few years to finish,
depending on how fast one works through the book.

"I'm almost completed with mine, and I've been
working on it for about six months," Mortenson says. "December
of 2011, I went through the academy and I spent all summer at the
station every day from about 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. just working, getting
sign-offs, helping with yard work and just helping out."

Although Mortenson's parents are in the nursery business at
Rogers Gardens in Springfield, firefighting is in his blood.

"My uncle was Lane Rural's fire chief for 15 years, and
my aunt, his wife, was a captain at Lane Rural," Mortenson says.
"I grew up hanging out with them and knew that's what I wanted
to do."

Although Mohawk is a volunteer station, it's Mortenson's
dream to work at a career fire station somewhere in the Pacific
Northwest.

"I would love some day to end up in Seattle," he says.
"I like being on the water, so I'd end up wanting to be on a
fire boat, near water, doing water rescue-type stuff. I like the
technical rescue and the heavy rescue type stuff. That's what
I'm into and miss about search and rescue."

Before that can happen, Mortenson has some schooling to do. As of
now, he plans on attending Lane Community College after the summer fire
season is over, to begin work on prerequisites for paramedic and fire
degrees.

When he's not at the station, Mortenson works in the feed
department at Coastal Farm and Ranch in Eugene, stocking and throwing
around 50-pound bags of feed.

At Thurston High, he maintains a 3.2 grade-point average and is on
a team that builds and races electric cars.

But his passion is for fire.

"What I do as a hobby, in my free time, is fire-fight,"
Mortenson says. "Basically, if I've got two or three hours in
a day that I don't have anything planned, I'll just go to the
station and hang out. There's always something that needs to be
done."

Red Box kiosk emptied of 212 DVDs

Taking the idea of self-service to a criminal level, someone
reportedly stole 212 DVDs from a Redbox kiosk outside a McDonald's
in east Springfield last week, police said.

The discs are valued at $3,816.

Springfield police Sgt. Rich Charboneau said a Redbox employee
reported that a thief had emptied the kiosk of its DVDs sometime between
Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning of last week.

The targeted kiosk sits outside a McDonald's at 5701 Main St.
in the Thurston area.

It was not clear how the bandit had gotten into the kiosk, which
did not appear to have been damaged.

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